From the press release from The Center for Sex & Culture, one of my favorite organizations, comes information about one of the most exciting adult sex education events of the year:

The Center for Sex & Culture, originator of the live Masturbate-a-Thon, will hold its 10th annual fundraising and consciousness-raising event showcasing solo sexuality on May 30, 2010 at its 1519 Mission Street suites. Hosting the event and anchoring its live online webcast will be CSC co-founder and executive director Carol Queen, Ph.D. She will be joined by various celebrity hosts, including icon Nina Hartley (Nina.com), Feminist Porn Awards Winner Courtney Trouble (Nofauxxx.com) and gender queer pornstar Jiz Lee (JizLee.com).

Doors will open at 10 AM for competitors seeking to best the current world time record (currently 9 hours and 58 minutes for males and 7 hours and 6 minutes for females), and the door time for non-competing masturbators is 2 PM. Audience may arrive after 4 PM for the public viewing – voyeur seating ticket price is $25.00.

The event is expected to last until approximately 11 PM and will be web cast live (to viewers over 18 only) from 4 to 9 PM on Tube8.com. Event site Masturbate-a-thon.com historically receives a significant spike of interest and web traffic just before and on the day of the Masturbate-a-Thon. In 2009, between 30,000-60,000 people watched the web cast for all or part of its duration. The official Masturbate-a-Thon has participated in movies and television programs all over the globe.

Businesses, organizations and other entities can sponsor and/or send representatives to the Masturbate-a-Thon. The event also encourages competitive public team challenges in which one organization or business fields a team to challenge another: to date, the most notable challenge has been between a fire department and an ambulance company in Canada.

A year ago I ran into Karla, a good friend’s twin sister at the hair salon. “You look fantastic!” I said to her. “Is it the new haircut?”

“Well,” she admitted, “I’ve had some work done.”

I was nonplussed. What did getting her patio fixed or her roof repaired have to do with how radiant and youthful-looking she suddenly looked? “No, silly,” another friend chided. “Getting work done means having your face worked on. Not your house. They used to call it a facelift.”

I’m European. When I was a girl, we called getting our period “being unwell.” “Getting work done,” is the new euphemism in my present stomping ground of Beverly Hills, California. But I’ve caught on. Recently, I’ve been ill and haven’t been out much. When I told my husband that I’d become a virtual recluse, he was extremely sympathetic. “It’s because of your bad hip,” he said. “You haven’t been able to drive anywhere.” In Los Angeles, you can’t really get about without a car.

I disabused him. “That’s only half the reason. Because of my hip, I haven’t been able to drive to see Dr. T. And so I can’t face any of my friends.” He scrunched his brow to make a moue. He’s a guy and doesn’t get Dr. T. at all.

Forget Houdini's brooding eyes and dark curls. Forget his personal magnetism. Those were strictly incidental. Forget the amount of skin--well-muscled skin--that he showed in his escapes. That was only to demonstrate he wasn't hiding a key anywhere. Strictly utilitarian. Houdini's appeal to his audience was based entirely on the complexity of his tricks and the calm reasoning he showed when dealing with mediums and spiritualists, and it's a mere coincidence that many of the male faces of the skeptical movement since then have had similar stage experience and heaps of charisma.

When there were no female skeptics at skeptics' meetings and conventions, there was no sex at these gatherings. None of the men attending found any occasion to think about, discuss or have sex. Everything was focused entirely on skepticism and critical thinking, with partying saved for the meetings of lesser souls.

Ridiculous assertions? Yes, and I've deliberately presented them with all the seriousness they deserve. But that doesn't keep this idea from being the unexamined underpinning of one of the current arguments being made in skeptical circles. Stated in its most bald form, it is suggested that women are ruining skepticism by bringing "teh sexy."

And then instead of focusing on the critical she turns it around and tells us what she wants teens to be able to expect from adults who are truly looking out for them:

What do I want teens (and the adults who care for them) to know? That forming a sexual identity is a developmental task of adolescents. That adults need to support the teen virgins and the teens who engage in sexual behaviors. That truth telling should be the hallmark of all of our programs. That adults will do everything they can to protect youth from abusive adults, regardless of profession. That young people have the right to ask questions and a right to have answers. That they deserve our respect and our support as they become adults.

I'm glad there are people of faith out there who understand that sexuality is not an awful thing from which we need protection but rather a part of being human and something we need to cultivate and understand.

Sexual pleasure is a human right and I wholeheartedly support the providing of free surgery to those who need it and can't afford it. This is the case for many women who underwent the excision of their clitorises during ritual cutting (FGM/C). There is also no question in my mind that "Adopt a Clitoris" - the campaign rally of Clitoraid.org - is a deeply problematic slogan for a deeply problematic organization. If you're new to the Clitoraid story here's some background:

Several years ago the Raelians (a religious group that believes humans were created by intelligent designers from outer space) founded an organization, Clitoraid, to offer free clitoris reconstruction surgeries to women who had undergone clitoridectomy - one form of female circumcision or female genital mutliation/cutting (FGM/C) - so that they could have the pleasure of clitoral stimulation restored to them. Clitoraid uses language that reduces sexual pleasure to clitoral orgasms and that treats African women's bodies as objects that can be reduced to clitorises and adopted. That said, it is true that their mission is indeed to provide free surgery to women who need it. They do this by funding surgeries at a clinic in Trinidad Colorado, and also by using donations to build a hospital in Burkina Faso.

How's that, you might ask? The new standards, which are now part of state education law, include teaching about the proper use of contraception. This, according to DA Scott Southworth, means encouraging kids to commit illegal acts. Encouraging someone to commit a crime is itself a crime. Thus teaching teens about the proper use of contraception is a crime. He equates this with teaching minors how to mix alcoholic drinks when they are too young to consume them or serve them.

This would not pass the critical thinking test in my Introduction to Sociology course. It fails on a few levels. Most obviously, teaching people about something is not the same as encouraging them to do it. I can teach about illegal drug use, the dangers of the same, the reasons people use the drugs, the routes that they follow to acquire the drugs, the different philosophies around addressing illegal drug use in communities, and the prevention strategies that work and that don't work. This does not mean I am encouraging my students to use illegal drugs.

To avoid Constance McMillen bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a "fake prom" while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn't much to keep an eye on.

You might remember that earlier this month I wrote a blog called Homophobia: Bad for Straight Kids discussing the decision of a Mississippi school board to cancel its prom because they could not otherwise prevent Constance McMillen and her partner from attending. (They also forbade her from attending in a tuxedo. This is not just about homophobia. This is also about gender expression.)

You’ve taken a walking tour of literary New York, Renaissance Harlem and the financial district (watch out for falling facades!) Now it’s time to take a walking tour of women’s least understood, but dynamic anatomical location!

Dr. Chalker provides a surprising “inside” look at women’s genital anatomy, revealing that what is almost universally though of as a pea-sized nubbin is, in reality, a powerful, responsive organ system. Beginning at conception, we’ll learn that fetuses masturbate in utero. Then we’ll explore the visible parts of the clitoris, the parts that cannot be seen, but can be felt, and finally the parts that can’t be seen or felt, and discover how these complex structures work together to produce pleasure and orgasm and why, for some women, orgasm may be elusive.

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